


Pandora

by ultraviolence



Category: Alien Series, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Body Horror, Crossover, Enemies to Lovers, Horror Elements, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Some Humor, Survival Horror, some gore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-18 08:35:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11870580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultraviolence/pseuds/ultraviolence
Summary: When the Empire was threatened from the inside by the sudden appearance of mysterious creatures, the Death Star became a safe haven. However, when a lone TIE Pilot turns out to be infected, that status quickly changed. Now threatened by both the highly dangerous aliens and a trio of unknown stowaways, the Grand Moff and the Director must put aside their differences and work together to save not only themselves but also what still can be salvaged...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so. This is part of a larger story and I fully blame [Eliot](http://archiveofourown.org/users/archistratego) for this, who came up with the original idea. Consider this part of their white noise series, which deals with Thrawn and Eli's storyline (might want to check that out too), while mine deals with Tarkin and Krennic's storyline, and eventually the Rogue One crew in part two. This chapter is mostly just setting up stuff and talking, so all the pew pew pew and the horror shit will come later.
> 
> Enjoy!

It all started out so quickly.

One morning everything is as usual aboard the Death Star—the officers, crewmen and women, troopers, techs and workers going about their way like they always have, ever since the battle station became operational and habitable, slowly accumulating more and more people as the super weapon came closer and closer to completion and eventually reached that completion, not a small feat, but a triumph of galactic proportions—and then suddenly, everything is in chaos.

Destruction. Death. Alarms blaring off, a jarring sound, disturbing and demanding, interspersed with the voices of the crew as they ran about, trying to find out what is happening. Trying to save themselves. No one panicked—these were all the best of the best the Empire has to offer, and war is all they have ever known—no one screamed or lose their composure, but it wasn’t long before the things came.

The things. _Creatures_. Whatever and whoever they are and however they came about.

As the person largely responsible for constructing and maintaining the mobile battle station in order, Director Orson Krennic could recall, with perfect, alarming clarity, how it all started. As with the outbreak in Coruscant—he remembered watching the holovid of it in the privacy of his office, arms gripping his chair, leaning forward, transfixed and wondering what is happening, what is happening—it started with a single person, a lone TIE Fighter Pilot, flying in from a base in Malastare. She told them that she’d lost the rest of her wingmates.

In retrospect, the crew responsible for vetting her should have done their job better. But that early in the incubation stage, it was hard to tell, and the xenobiologists on board (there are two of them, sent from Coruscant before the third outbreak) does not have sufficient information yet to reach the conclusion that she was infected. For that mistake, Grand Moff Tarkin would have their head, and for once—just _this once_ —Krennic was inclined to agree with his superior officer, but they can hardly carry that out after the chain of events started unfolding. One person turned to three, three turned to nine, and nine turned into a nightmare, signified with the sounds of alarms as the entire battle station was galvanised into action, into _fight this or die screaming_ , and he was summarily summoned—more like spirited away—into Tarkin’s office.

The Grand Moff looked as displeased as he did when he entered the office, his two most trusted Death Troopers stayed behind him to guard the entrance, Tarkin’s calm demeanor betraying the edge in his body.

“Governor Tarkin,” Krennic said, not bothering with the rule that his superior should always speak first. “I assume you’ve called me here to somehow pin this blame on me?”

“I don’t have time to dispense pleasantries with you, Director Krennic,” Tarkin retorted, looking up from the reports he had been examining to meet the younger man’s icy gaze, his tone acerbic. “However tempting that might seem. We have a more pressing matter to discuss. Take a seat.”

Krennic’s lips curled down into a scowl, and he hesitated for a moment, but he sat in the empty chair across him. There was a moment—the _usual_ moment—where they gazed at each other with barely suppressed disgust, old enmities dying hard, but Krennic broke the silence first. “Do we have time for _discussions_ , Governor? People have started dying and we may not be on full red alert just yet, but the time we spent in a committee is a time we could spend identifying the cause, and, might I add, _fight it_. This battle station is currently the most secure place in the Empire, and if we did not get these things off on time…” he trailed off, remembering the holovids and recordings he had watched about these creatures. “There may _not_ be a next time.”

“Are you blind as well as you are _stupid_ ?” Tarkin remarked, a hint of tightly coiled fury underscoring his cultured voice. Krennic snarled, but the Grand Moff continued, always undeterred. “I am _not_ a committee, Director. This isn’t a committee. It is certainly not my concern if you go on bragging about how this station is the most secure place in the Empire after the first outbreak in Coruscant, pending weapons test notwithstanding, and then this is happening, but it is certainly my concern that you seem to have a lack of information on how to best handle the situation.”

“I have read the reports and watched the recordings—“

“But clearly _not all of them_ ,” Tarkin stressed, cutting him off, and Krennic glared at him. This is the normal order of things. “I want you here to give me the report on the current situation, and then we will identify the threat and how to best contain and eventually dispose of it. Is that clear?”

Krennic curled his gloved hand into a fist, but he nodded. “Yes, Governor. That’s clear enough.”

“I have several new reports from Coruscant and a recording that I certainly found to be interesting,” Tarkin continued, hand already sifting through the datapads littering his desk. “I want you to read them and review the recording,” he said, sharply, once more meeting the other man’s gaze. “Here. Time is of the essence, Director, in case that wasn’t clear already. You may give me your report now.”

“One question, Governor,” Krennic said, directing his focus on the matter at hand and trying to suppress his fury and annoyance at his superior. For the most part, he succeeded, remembering the…things…he saw in the recordings and the reports he’d already read. It makes him want to shudder. “Which one of the footages is it?”

Tarkin’s lips curled up into a tight smile. “It is certainly not something you have seen. It arrived this morning from an unknown source, transmitted to the High Command Headquarters on Coruscant.” he paused, briefly, pulling out a data card and putting it on the desk. “You’ll see soon enough. A security footage, recorded aboard the Imperial Star Destroyer Chimaera.”

“The Chimaera? I would have thought that it had been lost—“

“Ever since it stopped communicating with the nearest base we’ve had out there in the Outer Rim, yes. However, it appears that things may not be as it seems.” There was a pause as Tarkin let that information sink in, and Krennic turned it over in his mind. The Chimaera. A security footage. The sudden appearance of the creatures, seemingly out from nowhere. “Do you have any more questions, Director? You said yourself that time spent in a committee wasn’t time well spent, and you are certainly a man of action, so I’d advise that you continue with your report.”

Krennic felt the earlier flash of fury returning, and he had just the perfect retort for that, but he bit his tongue. He’d never admit it out loud, but this time—and _only this time_ —Tarkin was right. He cleared his throat. “No, sir, I don’t have any more questions. At oh eight hundred this morning, I received a report that Lieutenant Alrakis, the TIE Pilot we picked up three days back, has disappeared from where she was confined in the medbay. Or, specifically…the _creature_ incubating inside her body has broken free,” he paused, rather awkwardly, watching the Governor’s reaction. Tarkin motioned him to continue. “As you can well imagine, Governor, it was not a pretty picture. At oh eight fifteen, she, or rather, the creature, was spotted in service deck N-08. A squad of stormtroopers was dispatched with orders to capture her alive, if possible, but she eluded pursuit.” A look of rare impatience crossed the other man’s face, and Krennic hastened to conclude his report. “As Imperial procedure dictates, we are on full yellow alert now, with suspected nine creatures onboard, all in the northern hemisphere. All available troopers and officers have been called to their duty stations with the specific orders to capture them alive if possible, dead if absolutely necessary.”

“Revise that order,” the Governor said, the coldness of his tone betraying the visible edge shown by his rigid posture. “Order the troopers and officers to set their blasters to kill. I want the creatures to be eliminated. We must kill them all before this contagion spreads further, Director.”

“With all due respect, _sir_ ,” the flash of anger he felt earlier returning with a vengeance, and he bit out the word, “as acting commander of this battle station, I think it necessary to study these creatures if possible, considering—“

“You are not ‘acting commander’, Director. You merely supervise its construction,” Tarkin said, raising a finger to stop him. “And as your superior, I order you to kill these creatures. _All_ of them. This is not a school science project. This is a matter of survival, and we must eliminate them all if we are to survive.”

As it always have been and it always shall be, Krennic opened his mouth to counter him, eyes flashing with barely suppressed anger, already half-raised himself from his seat, when the door suddenly slid open, revealing a flustered-looking officer in drab olive green, clutching his cap in one hand. Both men turned to face him, an argument in progress— _almost_ —and the intruder swallowed, hard, before stopping some distance away from them, straightening his posture and saluting both of them.

“S-sirs,” he stammered a bit, a flush of terror in his dark eyes, “permission to speak, sir. Urgent matter.”

“Yes, Lieutenant?” Tarkin responded, already gathering himself. “You may speak. Sit down, Director.”

“Th- the creatures have already spotted, reached, the barracks in deck N-14, sirs. There is, was, a…a _carnage_ happening, sirs,” he swallowed again, sagging for a bit, but then straightened up again, feeling the force of both Tarkin and Krennic’s combined gazes. “I- I- we’re afraid they might be heading to the command decks. The General issued an order to evacuate.”

“ _Evacuate_ ?” Krennic said, gaze flitting between the sweating, panicked young Lieutenant, and the cool, collected Grand Moff behind his desk, his blue eyes calculating, the rigid set of his shoulders once more betraying his calm demeanor. “We are _not_ on red alert yet!”

“With all due respect, sir, th- the General said that we should be, by now, considering—“

Tarkin raised a finger again, and the young Lieutenant fell silent, squirming a little. Krennic could only guess at the horror he’d seen, but, he thought, consoling himself, it’s probably nothing compared to interrupting Tarkin in the middle of a very important meeting. Well. In the middle of a yellow alert, with nine aliens, very dangerous creatures on the loose. He had very little doubt of who would come out to be the winner in the case of the Grand Moff versus one of these creatures, but at the same time it still obviously gets under his skin, and very little gets under Tarkin’s wrinkly skin.

Because they threatened _the entire Empire_. Because they are a threat, not only to the lives of the men and women serving the Empire but also for the lives of men and women _inside_ it, the ones they are supposed to be protecting. After all, what good would the battle station be, if all it ended up overseeing are ashes?

His brief reverie was interrupted with sudden movement from the Grand Moff, who had, in one quick movement, raised himself from his seat. He calmly reached into the topmost drawer in his desk, taking out a standard issue blaster and checking its battle readiness, feeling the heft of it in his hands. He wasn’t the type to distinguish himself with a customised blaster, Krennic knows, but he was good with almost every type of weapon, including but not confined to rifles and pistols, and even—he heard—non-standard ones. He vaguely wondered if they would have a chance to see him in action, considering.

“Then we evacuate. I will subsequently issue an order for a full red alert. Lieutenant, take some of those datapads and that datacard,” he said, already keying his comm, taking the two men's shocked surprise in stride. He didn’t holster his blaster and fixed his gaze on Krennic, calm and deadly. “Ready your blaster, Director. If the state of our Lieutenant is anything to go by, things on the ground have worsened considerably. Signal two more of your best troopers to assist us.”

There was something like the ghost of a smile touching his pale features, and Krennic felt himself shudder. It wasn’t the look of a man anticipating a possible battle with very dangerous, possibly intelligent creatures, it was the look of a predator anticipating a challenge.

“And maybe get rid of that thing,” he gestured at Krennic’s cape, already marching towards the door, while the young Lieutenant had started fumbling after the datapads and the datacards. “That would slow us down considerably if we encounter any of these creatures.”

And so, the battle for survival aboard the Death Star has truly begun.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tarkin and Krennic go to examine the scene of the creatures' latest known carnage and got more than they bargained for, slowly realising that the threat is bigger than they think and more horrifying than what they know. Elsewhere, another event transpired in the hangar of the Death Star, involving an unsuspecting trooper and three stowaways...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where things get progressively...worse. Fair warning that there will be some gore and body horror ahead. Also, I'm taking some liberties where Alien canon are concerned.
> 
> Enjoy!

The walk to the overbridge was permeated with uncomfortable silence, the sort that was so thick that it could be cut through with a laser.

The Grand Moff leads the way, his brisk, firm gait matched by Krennic’s determined one, the Lieutenant following two steps behind them with the datapads, flanked by Krennic’s two Death Troopers. A lot of things flitted around in Krennic’s mind, running through it frantically, some of them related to the creatures and the state of the battle station, but most of them are related to their destination. With every step they took, leaving the certainty and the relative safety of Tarkin’s office behind them, he grew even more frustrated, wondering where, truly, are they going and what are they _doing_ , in general. There are a number of ways to get to the overbridge, some of them quicker and—he hazarded—right now _safer_ than the others, and they were supposed to take one of them, not going into the direction—he surmised—of the sealed, doomed deck that the Lieutenant had come from. 

His gaze landed, briefly, on the young man, now looking as determined as he was supposed to be, alongside him and the Grand Moff, but there was something else underlying it, a certain sort of restlessness. It was pretty much palpable, oozing out of his pores like the uncomfortable silence between them all. During any other situation, Krennic would hardly feel sorry for him, but right now he felt something like it. It must not have been easy, he thought, first being sent with the order from his General to evacuate, and then accompanying both of them on a wild rancor chase, because that seemed to be what this little trip is turning into.

“Governor,” he remarked, sharply, breaking the silence, quickening his pace to match the older man’s exactly. “May I ask where exactly are we heading? The overbridge is that way, and if we are planning to evacuate as General Leandar asked via the Lieutenant, we are most definitely not heading towards the hangar, either.”

Tarkin inclines his head slightly in Krennic’s direction, not breaking his stride. “I was waiting for you to catch up, Director, and it is a fairly tedious affair. However,” a thoughtful look crossed his expression, “you are right this time. Why do you think we are heading towards the overbridge?”

“Because it’s the _obvious_ choice, Governor,” Krennic bit out the words, annoyance underscoring it. “We will be safe there from the creatures because of the blast doors, and we could monitor the situation better, indeed the entire station, from there. And we could call the rest of the—“ he tried to think of the right term, fumble around with it for a bit in his head, feeling Tarkin’s icy gaze on him. Survivor seemed to be the right term, but the word was fraught with implications, troublesome ones, and at the moment, Krennic still refused to believe that their defence— _his_ security measures—had been breached so completely and so thoroughly by the unknown creatures. “—of our people there. To put it simply, we had a better chance of surviving this… _encounter_ in the overbridge.”

“And you think that the creatures would just go away on their own volition?” Tarkin snapped, stopping dead in his tracks, turning to face him. “Is that it? Do you think we could simply sit this one out and let the creatures come to us and kill us one by one, herding ourselves to the overbridge and pen ourselves there for the slaughter to come? Would that option be preferable to you, Director?” Krennic opened his mouth to respond, feeling his face flush with fury and embarrassment both, but Tarkin’s gaze quickly shifted to the Lieutenant, who had stopped, too, the Death Troopers spreading out to cover the perimeter. Despite the earlier chaos and frantic rushing, the hallways—at least the ones they have passed—have been for the most part mostly deserted, since everyone is presumably either at their duty stations or in hiding. Krennic had the cold, dreadful feeling that it was the latter, but he refused to think about it, much less believed it.

“What do you think, Lieutenant? Where do you think we should go?” Tarkin continued, and Krennic glared at him furiously, biting out waves after endless waves of acid remarks, his body could barely holding back his explosive anger. He felt the Lieutenant flinch when he turned and his gaze landed on him, too, but the young man steeled himself.

“It’s Koor, sir,” he said, nodding respectfully to the Grand Moff. “Lieutenant Aramil Koor. Don’t think I’ve told you that.” he paused momentarily, gaze flitting between Tarkin and Krennic, as he did earlier in the office. There was fear in his gaze, but there was also something else, something like the will to survive, durasteel underneath all the wavering youthful anxiety. “If you ask me my opinion, sir…I think we should follow General Leandar’s orders, but,” his gaze flitted back to Krennic. “I think the Director might have the right idea. Strength in numbers, sir. That’s what we were taught.”

Krennic felt something like triumph rising in his stomach, and he felt his lips curling into a smirk, but Tarkin’s cold gaze on him put a premature end to it. “Don’t get cocky yet, Director,” he said, evenly, and Krennic had to rein in the urge to land a blow or two on his face. The young Lieutenant blanched slightly as if realising that he had somehow taken a wrong step, makes the wrong decision. “The Lieutenant might agree with you, but I’m the one with the authority to make the decisions.” he paused, taking the time to survey both of their expressions, the briefest hint of a smile on his lips. “We will head to the barracks in deck N-14. We are going to survey the area, look for clues that might give us more about the enemy that we are currently facing. We will question the survivors, if there is any.”

“And head straight to a _massacre_?” Krennic bristled, raising his voice. “Governor, if the aliens are still there—“

“If you watch the holovids closely enough, Director, you’ll notice the deadly effectiveness of our enemies. By now, they should leave nothing but corpses behind, corpses we can examine for clues.”

Krennic stepped closer to him, snarling. He could feel the Lieutenant tensing behind him, and his Death Troopers readying themselves. When it comes down to it, he wondered, would they shoot the Grand Moff? Or would he be the one on the receiving end of their awesome firepower? He might have created them and oversee their creation, but when it comes down to it, they are ultimately loyal to the Empire. 

And the head of the Tarkin Initiative.

“We have no time for examinations!” he finally exploded in a bout of rage, curling his gloved hand into a fist. “You said so yourself earlier, _Tarkin_. You rejected _my_ idea of studying them outright, and now you wanted to go to the scene of the carnage, possibly getting us killed, _and_ play a kriffing guessing game with the dead. This isn’t a school science project, _sir_ ,” he continued, still snarling, “this is a matter of _survival_.”

“Mind your language, Director Krennic,” Tarkin bit back, seemingly unmoved by Krennic’s show of temper if not for the cold look on his face. “I would have thought that we were standing in a seedy cantina in the Outer Rim, not an orbital battle station of the Empire. In any other situation, I’d have half a mind to discipline you for that. However,” he added, almost casually, despite the hard look on his face, “might I remind you both that time is of the essence. If we are to identify the threat and then successfully eliminate it, we must first learn what they are capable of. That would enable us to understand them and therefore we can anticipate their moves, before we strike the killing blow.” his gaze shifted briefly to land on Lieutenant Koor, who didn’t flinch, but met his with curiosity and anticipation. “Do you _both_ understand? No matter what you think about these creatures, no matter your fears, they can be killed. Think of them as animals. We will defeat them.”

Krennic spoke first in the intervening silence that inevitably followed. “What’s stopping me from taking _my_ troopers and head to the overbridge? You can go to the massacre if you’d like, Governor, I could care less. There’s nothing for me there.”

Tarkin’s voice was as sharp as his gaze and just as deadly. “Nothing. I will not stop you. But rest assured, Director, after this is over, there _will_ be consequences for defying my orders. And they won’t be pleasant.”

Their gazes met, and it stayed that way for a little while, one filled with seething hate mixed with hot fury, the other cool, its hatred glacial, a patient predator, salt water slowly eroding a rock. Krennic broke it first, taking a couple of steps back. “ _Fine_. We go to check the barracks. I’ll tell the rest of my troopers to meet us there. But after that, if we found nothing, I’m going to the overbridge. I _will_ take charge.”

Tarkin’s smile was the edge of a vibroblade. “Oh, trust me, we’re going to find a lot, Director. I believe I have judged these creatures quite correctly.”

He resumed his stride, and Krennic was about to follow him, lips pressed into a thin line. His fury earlier hasn’t completely evaporated, and he still wasn’t sure if this was a good idea. In any other situation, he would have advocated a more martial solution, because it was always better to go down with a fight, because it was always better to fight than to let your enemies outsmart you. 

It was always better to try than to stand by helplessly and do nothing, but any other situation is not this one. He glanced momentarily at the young Lieutenant following them—the Troopers already on the move, one of them scouting ahead of Tarkin—and stopped, briefly, when he saw that the younger officer had stopped, looking over his shoulder. 

“Is there something wrong, Lieutenant?” Krennic asked, a little curiosity bleeding into his otherwise clipped tone. The other Trooper had moved to flank him, but Lieutenant Koor didn’t move to follow him and catch up with the rest of the party, instead standing there, gaze searching for something.

“Nothing, sir,” he finally responded, still looking a little distracted, but met Krennic’s questioning gaze. “Just an odd noise.”

Krennic raised an eyebrow but didn’t press the matter further. At least the younger officer knows better than to jump at shadows. “If there’s nothing, then let’s get on with it. The Grand Moff did say that time is of the essence.”

He visibly swallowed but nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Don’t get too trigger happy at strange noises,” Krennic told him, resuming his stride. “It might be nothing.”

But then again, he thought, thinking of the holovids he’d seen, it might be something, and that could mean life or death. Still, he didn’t tell the younger man that, and he turned his mind to the things to come, as the Lieutenant hurried to catch up with them.

The remark wormed its way back to his mind later, buried underneath other thoughts, but Krennic didn’t think much about it. Later, he wondered if it was somehow his mistake.

* * *

Commander Rel Cormin wasn’t an especially valiant man, but he was pragmatic, hard-working, and, some would say, have absolutely zero sense of imagination, to which he would respond that that was precisely why he was promoted to Commander at the relatively young age of thirty, stationed in the Empire’s top secret battle station nevertheless. Despite all of that—especially the lack of imagination bit—he still found that his imagination, which he’d kept in tight check ever since the alarms start blaring this morning, has managed to somehow break free and ran wild when he saw the bodies littering the hangar. A lesser man would have turned tail and run, but Cormin was determined to take a look. His last order was to guard and defend the now-sealed hangar—before chaos took over—and he’d ordered two of his men under his command to guard this section before they both disappeared and their comms went static. There are seven of them including him, and that number was minuscule compared to the size of the hangar, but they were the best of the best and, he assumed, the rest of the force was spread thin. Between the creatures and the Rebel threat, even the significant size of the troopers aboard the Death Star was most likely not enough. 

The bodies, however, wasn’t the most puzzling part. At least, not when they were seen together as one picture and not parts that make up the whole.

The one nearest to him had been torn apart, its limbs in disarray, a grotesque joke in an empty room. It was a trooper like him, in white armour, now smeared with blood. He kneeled near it, took off his helmet—he didn’t exactly know why he did that, he can examine the body just fine if not better with it on, and he didn’t have to smell the blood and the reeking guts and other related smell, but he knows that he should, as a gesture of final respect if nothing else—looked at its face, felt the slight rush of relief that it wasn’t one of his missing men. 

He stood up, about to move to the next one—there are seven, no, eight of them, in various morbid poses—when he sensed movement from somewhere behind him, and Cormin turned instinctively, his blaster on the ready. He waited for a little while, but since there was nothing, and nobody, he relaxed a little, although he didn’t lower his blaster. The immense silence of the hangar almost made him shudder. Usually, this was one of the most well-populated place aboard the battle station, with ships and people and troopers and techs coming and going all the time, but now it was empty, devoid of any and all sorts of sign of life except for him, a sole living light amongst the dead, extinguished bodies.

Cormin didn’t dwell on the thought. He briefly thought about calling at least one or two of the men from his unit to reinforce him, just in case, but then he thought against it. All of them had tasks of their own, their own section to patrol and monitor, and he could surely investigate a couple of dead bodies on his own. If something was off, he could determine the best way to handle the problem.

He moved to the next body, kneeling beside it and turning its face gently to him. It was indeed one of his men, his lips parted and his eyes wide as if something surprised him and he can’t quite snap out of it. His helmet was near him, smeared with blood, but it was too neatly positioned—in fact, too neatly arranged—for it to be a product of the circumstance that killed the man. Cormin’s eyes moved to the wound on his chest—the fatal wound that killed him—and his eyes went wide at the burn mark, the familiar shape of the entry point—

He didn’t get to finish his thought. A familiar sound cut through the thick silence and the next thing he know, he fell to his knees, a scorching sensation on the back of his right knee, but before he could respond, before he could raise his blaster and shoot the unknown assailant, another shot rings out.

Commander Rel Cormin was dead, his body falling beside the other trooper. Silence reigns supreme in the hangar once more, the dead, unseeing eyes of Cormin’s missing man staring at nothing and everything all at once.

“It didn’t have to be so messy,” an irritated male voice said, traces of an Outer Rim accent in his voice. “You could shoot him once, Shayna.”

“I have to be dead sure about it,” came out the reply from the sole female in the group, a tall, golden-haired woman, stepping out into the open cautiously from where they were hiding behind a stack of crates nearby. “The knee joint is a weak point in our armour, but that’s hardly a killing shot.”

“You could let me lure him out,” the man continued, trailing after her. “I nearly succeeded.”

“If he comms for his unit, we’d have a lot more on our plate. We’d need to kill more men. And that’s precisely what we were trying to avoid.” she knelt beside the newly dead trooper, examining it, deliberately drawing out the silence. Then she straightened herself up. “And that’s precisely what we’re trying to avoid. Don’t we, Mathias?”

The second man had come out of the hiding place when the woman was examining the newest addition to the dead scattered around them, his gait slow and deliberate. He was taller, taller than the woman and dwarfing the other man, dressed in a stormtrooper’s armour like the woman, his helmet on his hand. His expression was hard.

“In fact, we _didn’t_ have to kill anyone, Shayna. We were trying to save them, not slaughter them.” he rankled his nose in obvious distaste, gaze flitting around the bodies before settling on her. “We are not Rebel terrorists.”

A shadow crossed Shayna’s expression, but her back was still turned towards him, so Mathias didn’t see it. However, the other man—coming back after his own round of examinations—spoke first, breaking the silence. “I still don’t get why we need to…to do this. We could simply sneak inside without murdering anyone. I got the code. I could open the gate.”

“We need to eliminate the guards, and we need to make them believe that it was the creatures who did this.” _One less Imperial makes the galaxy a better place_ , she thought, back into her childhood, back before her own homeworld fell under Imperial control. It was something her mother had told her, before she was sent into an Imperial Academy. Back then she didn’t know what it means. Back then she didn’t know what anything means, what being an agent of the Rebellion means. She pushed the thought to the back of her mind. “Besides…this isn’t all us, Hess. Look at this. Something was here before we did.”

A thick, palpable silence fell between them, on top of the eerie silence permeating the hangar. Shayna spoke again before any of her companions could say anything. “It’s time to go. I think this will be enough to spook the rest of the men.”

Her companions agreed wordlessly, and she strode forward, not looking back to see if they were following her. Not looking back to see the dead men, most of them torn apart like rag dolls, only two of them were shot clean with a blaster. She readied her own blaster—whatever they were about to face, the Imperials, now thrown into disarray, surely isn’t the worst of them.

And besides, she thought, grip tightening around her blaster, whatever was here earlier was liable to return and finish them all off.

* * *

It was worse than Krennic had pictured.

The deck should have been sealed, the door leading to it closed shut in line with the quarantine protocols, not to mention the red alert echoing throughout the station, but when they arrived there, blasters at the ready, it was wide open, a prologue for the strange and terrible scene. There are already bodies littering the hallway—officers trying to get away—guts spattered on the otherwise sterile corridor, the reds offering a sharp contrast to the silver and whites. There was something terrible about it all, something that portends destruction and doom, but Krennic was never a superstitious man.

The first barracks, on the other hand, was the scene of a carnage. There was nothing pretty about it, nothing poetic or redeemable or heroic in any way, just tragedy, spelt with blood and glued together with guts. He almost averted his gaze the moment they stepped through the threshold, but steeled himself, hand gripping his customised blaster so tightly his knuckles turned white, and met the scene of the carnage head-on. 

There was blood everywhere: on the walls, on the beddings, slathered on the floor like a madman’s idea of paint. The bodies were a mess, poor mangled things, candles caught in a storm beyond their comprehension or even capability to defend themselves. Most of them were troopers, he noticed, but there were a couple of officers lying about. Stars, he thought to himself, who did this?

Who had the capability to do all of this? the thought filled him with fury beyond the one he felt earlier at Tarkin. He heard the Lieutenant gasp audibly behind him, before dropping to his knees with an equally audible thud, and then started retching. Krennic felt bile rising to his throat, but he focused his attention on the fury nesting in his stomach, moving to approach Tarkin. He was only dimly aware that his Troopers was moving with preternatural calm, securing the area.

The Grand Moff was examining one of the bodies, half-splattered into the wall, his usually guarded, calm expression opened up into something resembling fascination, but Krennic could sense the caged fury behind it, pacing, lurking just beyond reach. 

“Is the area secure?” he asked, gaze still glued at the dead woman.

“Yes,” Krennic told him, forcing himself to look at the dead body too. She was an especially grotesque one, her body torn in two, and he felt bile rising to his throat again. He turned his attention back to the other man. “My Troopers have confirmed it. However, we suspected that the other two barracks was in very much the same condition than this one was in.”

“Go and check them out,” Tarkin ordered, sparing him a glance. “Check for survivors too. And I don’t think I need to remind you to keep your guard up, Director. The assailants might have already gone, but that doesn’t preclude the possibility that they might return any moment now.”

He wondered, briefly, if they had sufficient intelligence to do so, if they targeted things—and people—consciously, but he pushed back the questions. “Your concern is touching, Governor, but hardly warranted. I can look after my own skin, and I will take the Troopers with me.”

“We can exchange more _pleasantries_ later, Director,” Tarkin replied, irritated. “That is, if you’re still alive. Now _go_.”

In any other situation, Krennic would have looked for a reason to defy his orders. But as it stands—it only took one glance to remember and a misstep to end up in one of the many pools of blood surrounding them—he simply nodded and turned around.

He only got so far as the door before he, too, dropped to his knees, and emptied the contents of his stomach.

* * *

“I found a survivor,” Krennic announced without any prologue, not breaking his stride as he stepped back into the first barracks, cloak billowing behind him. “Third barracks. Only one. Lieutenant Koor is trying to talk her out of her hiding place. I left one of my Troopers with him, just in case.”

The Grand Moff was the picture of calm, a lighthouse in the middle of a terrible storm, and he was keying something in his personal datapad, unruffled by the ghosts of the massacre surrounding him. “And the other barracks?” he asked, not looking up from whatever it was he was writing.

The ghastly memory—barely so, since he was just there a moment ago—made itself known, and Krennic instinctively cringed. The smell of the blood and the spilt human guts was somehow even worse now after the memory, as if its visitation inflamed his sense of smell to the point where it was almost unbearable. “In the same condition as this one. Destroyed, the occupants massacred.”

“But surely not all of them,” Tarkin pointed out, raising an eyebrow slightly, a question hidden somewhere in his words. Of all the tones he employed when he was dealing with him, Krennic hated this one the most, because he could never be certain if the other man was criticising him and his abilities plus intelligence (something that Krennic has always assumed to be the case), or if he was simply inquiring, but in a manner that reminded him of his most insufferable teacher back at school.

“No, I did just say I found a survivor,” he told the older man, irritation seeping into his voice. He hated how petulant he sounded at that moment, but he can’t help it. That’s the sort of effect that Wilhuff Tarkin incited. “That’s what you ordered.”

“No, Director, I mean some of the bodies are _missing_ ,” Tarkin said, a hint of strained patience in his voice, although he somehow looked more relaxed now. Krennic hazarded that he’d learnt something, which he hadn’t yet shared, and he felt fury burning within him again, an eternal flame, but he held his tongue this time. “Haven’t you noticed?”

His gaze prompted Krennic to look around the room once more—he _forced_ himself to look—and he followed Tarkin’s gaze, but the question marks did not resolve itself. “The number of the bodies didn’t match the number of the beds,” he explained, surprisingly with an amount of patience usually unknown to Krennic or, he suspected, to any living human being. “Even with the bodies out in the hallway, the numbers still don't quite add up. Of course, it could simply be that some of them were already heading towards their duty stations when the alarms sounded, but—” he pointed towards tracks of blood on the floor, broken at places, started on two of the beds. “—it seems to me that they are being hauled away by force.”

“But what would the creatures do with the bodies?” he said, crinkling his nose at the unpleasant thought. It was bad enough— _nightmarish_ enough—that they are capable of massacring swathes of people seemingly without rhyme or reason (and, unthinking creatures that they most likely are, Krennic assumed there is no rhyme or reason behind the killings). The thought that they stole the bodies as well to do stars knows what makes it worse. Or perhaps it’s not the act itself that repulsed him, it’s the fact that their motivations largely remained unknown to him that actually appalled him. 

“You forgot that they are perfectly capable of turning an individual human being into one of them,” Tarkin said, his tone once icier, his eyes a little distant. “Or what’s left of the individuals. Perhaps—“

Their conversation was interrupted by the chime of Krennic’s comm, and he immediately answered it. He felt the gaze of the other man on him, inquiring. 

“We should go,” he said after the brief conversation on the comm has ended, urgently. “It seems like our Lieutenant has managed to draw the survivor out.”

* * *

The third barracks was as Krennic remembered it. There was a large hole in the wall connecting to the second one—the barracks were all adjacent to each other—pieces of bent durasteel further served as a reminder that the hole was unnatural, wrong. It was strange-shaped, impossible to be made by a standard-issue blaster and, if he had to form a hypothesis, it looks as if someone—or some _thing_ —simply ripped it apart as if it was paper. The thought made him shudder.

The door was half-closed—someone had attempted to jam it shut in an ultimately doomed attempt to keep the aliens out—and they had to squeeze through, since the panel beside it was broken and the wires fried (shot with a blaster, without a doubt), but it wasn’t a tight squeeze, and soon enough he was back in the scene of another massacre, the Grand Moff behind him. 

In the corner opposite the hole, Lieutenant Koor was kneeling near a ragged, broken shell of a woman, the Death Trooper standing behind the Lieutenant, his blaster rifle raised and pointed at the sole survivor of the carnage.

“Stand back, Lieutenant,” Tarkin ordered, as they made their way to him.

The smell hit Krennic first, an overwhelming scent that rankles his nose, a combination of unpleasant odors that assails his senses and made him instinctively want to turn and walk away. He carefully observed the survivor, who was on her knees, hands clutched around herself as if she was attempting to shield herself from the rest of the galaxy. The woman’s uniform was torn in places and is in extreme disarray, and she was covered in something like black grime. She smelled of her own fear and bodily fluids, and Krennic could only take a wild shot in the dark at what she had been through. The hole in the wall, the missing dead, the mangled, broken bodies, and all the blood and spilled guts—he’d thought that watching the holovids of the outbreak in Coruscant—watching the creatures tear their way out of their human hosts—was horrific, but even that doesn’t sufficiently prepare him for _this_.

Lieutenant Koor shot the Grand Moff a questioning look, and Krennic could see the inner turmoil in his dark eyes for one brief second, but he nodded, stood up, and took a step back.

“I will handle this matter from here onwards,” Tarkin issued, gaze meeting the younger man briefly, before shifting his attention to the broken woman. “State your name and your rank, girl,” he said, nodding at the survivor. Krennic observed him closely from beside the Grand Moff.

There was what feels like a silence stretching into forever, occasionally broken by the faint, receding sobs coming from the woman, and the distant blaring of the alarms. Lieutenant Koor was holding his breath, but Krennic was far more impatient.

“E-ensign Pax, sir,” she muttered, her voice faint, but stronger than the rest of her. “Thessa Pax, Imperial Navy, with the Star Destroyer Preservation. J- junior weapons officer.”

“Ensign Pax,” Tarkin acknowledged, his tone as authoritative as it is calm, and even the woman, broken and traumatised, who would not meet their gaze—not even Koor’s—was forced to look at him. She was young, Krennic could see, perhaps twenty standard years at most, only a couple of years younger than the Lieutenant, but the ghosts in her hooded, fearful eyes has aged her by decades at least. “Tell us what happened here.”

Her gaze flitted, briefly, to Krennic, and then to the Lieutenant, but if there’s any hint of recognition that she was not only facing the Grand Moff but also Director Krennic, the two highest-ranking men aboard the Death Star, it was buried underneath all the fear and despair and the ghosts holding her under. There was another pause, and the Grand Moff looked impatient despite his deceptive calm, wanting to get this over with. Krennic absently wondered about what really goes on in that mind of his and how much vital information on the aliens that he had.

“I- it happened so fast,” she started, her breathing ragged, her bright green eyes distant and clouded. “I- I tried, and w- we opened fire, but they were too fast…” she trailed off, one hand goes down to her stomach, and a pained look crossed her tear-stained face. Krennic’s first thought was a blaster wound—perhaps an accidental friendly fire—but when her hand moved away for a fraction of a second, there was no burn mark, no singed fabric. No entry wound. “There are too many of them.” she added, a sharp edge in her tone—a faint clue of the Imperial officer that she used to be—and he thought that he could hear a hint of regret. “We were not badly outnumbered, not at first, but there were still too many of them.”

“Who’s ‘them’?” Krennic asked, cutting to the chase, ignoring the warning look that Tarkin was giving him. “What do you remember about them? Are they the ones cutting the hole in the wall?”

Her gaze met his for a moment—green and haunted—but she quickly flinched, wrapping her arms around herself again. Something wasn’t quite right with her, although Krennic wasn’t quite sure yet what, and he took her in once more: the torn, stained uniform, the ragged, fast breathing, the extreme sweatiness and the oddly dilated pupils, not to mention the suspicious-looking black grime, viscous and present in the other barracks as well as on her person—

“I meant no offense, sir, but perhaps Ensign Pax needed some time,” the Lieutenant cuts in, shooting them both a glance. He took a step forward, evidently was about to offer some comfort to the woman. “Might be that we wanted to take her somewhere safe first—“

“Step back, Lieutenant,” Tarkin called out, and something in his tone chilled Krennic to the bone. The young man looked at him, disbelief was written plainly on his face, and shook his head, already taking a step closer to the survivor, and she reached out to him, hand streaked with the black grime, and Krennic felt his breath catching in his throat. 

What happened next transpired so quickly that he barely had a chance to react. He instinctively pulled the younger man back, dragged him more like, because there was something in Tarkin’s tone that brooked no argument, and Krennic remembered the way her hands looked, streaked with the dark liquid, and the jarring feeling in the back of his mind that something isn’t right. He had barely pulled the struggling Koor out of the way when Tarkin opened fire. He shot the woman square in the temple, and, barely missing a beat, he fired again, the shot hitting her square in the chest, burning through her uniform tunic, and then another, on the stomach, a near-perfect hit to the spot that Krennic saw she was clutching earlier.

The Ensign fell dead, sprawled on their feet, and the Grand Moff lowered his blaster, muzzle still smoking.

It immediately dawned on Krennic that he was still gripping the Lieutenant by the arm—his grip tightening, subconsciously, when Tarkin shot the survivor dead—and when he let him go (his hands doesn’t shake, he’d seen shootings before, but it was plain as day that the Lieutenant’s hands were shaking) he took a uncertain, wobbly step forward, glancing at the dead body, then at Tarkin, and then back at the dead body (her eyes were wide, staring at the ceiling as if she saw something there). 

“What did you do that for?” he demanded, shaking with barely suppressed anger. “She survived those creatures, the carnage, we could simply take her with us, maybe drop her in the medbay—“

“There is no time, boy,” Tarkin cuts him off, his tone as cold as ever, his expression suitably hard. “She was going to die anyway. But most importantly,” he cuts him off again for the second time when the younger man opened his mouth to debate, not holstering his blaster just yet. “I have to ask you this question, Lieutenant. Do you have any blood on you? Answer me truthfully.”

“No,” he answered, bewilderment in his face. Clearly, Tarkin’s question took him by surprise. “I don’t see what—“

“Do you have any of those black grime on you?” Tarkin demanded, and Krennic fancied that he saw the ghost of a savage snarl, the Grand Moff’s hand raising his blaster again ever so slightly—

“Did he had any when you dragged him away from her, Director?” he suddenly asked, turning his head to meet Krennic’s gaze.

“No,” Krennic mustered, feeling annoyance welling up within him. It bothers him a lot that Tarkin kept him in the dark, purposefully or not, and he had no idea where this sudden row of questioning would lead. He had not the slightest idea, either, of why the Grand Moff would shoot the half-dying woman, although he had his suspicions. “At least, not that I know of. Governor, we had no time—“

The rest of his question was lost, turned into ashes in his mouth, as a sickly, wet ripping sound interrupted their conversation, and he could only watch in horror, at first, when the dead woman’s chest burst open—was _torn_ open—the exit wound from Tarkin’s shot became simply an _exit_ , as a half-formed alien creature gave birth to itself, crawling out from the gaping hole it made for itself slathered in the woman’s blood and the mysterious black liquid. 

The scene would have turned anyone’s stomach, and Krennic felt his own churned, remembering the holovids he’d watched. They were never fully clear on the shape of the creatures, never could capture the full savagery and capriciousness of their form, sleek and full of malice. He could see now that it was the same shade as the mysterious black grime, the head elongated and the tail long and serrated, which it was still trying to pull free of the dead woman’s body. But something was wrong with it. It was half the size of what the creatures were supposed to be—the reports were at least clear to specify their size—and its head was a little malformed, its tail still a little too long compared to the proportions of the rest of its body. 

He reached for his blaster, even if his mind not fully comprehending the situation just yet, instinct taking over, but his Troopers has already opened fire, not stopping even as the creature let out a strange keening sound and launched itself their way, and was immediately joined by more firepower from Tarkin—

When he finally pulled the trigger, the creature was already dead. His shot found its mark, but the relentless, combined firepower that preceded it proved to be sufficient to kill the alien. Its deformed body fell to the ground with a sickly thud, and Krennic felt his heart hammering in his chest, the sound obnoxiously loud compared to the silence that immediately followed, only punctuated by the sound of his own rapid breathing.

“We can’t stay here,” Tarkin spoke first, the faintest hint of an edge in his voice. It shows in the way he held himself, the merest hint of it, even as he slowly lowered his blaster, but keeping his eyes on the dead creature. A horrific thought occurred to Krennic: how many of these dead bodies are actually wombs, acting as vessel until the creatures burst free? The panicked thought thankfully only lasts for a moment, as he comforted himself with the fact—something he’d managed to garner from earlier reports and recordings—that it seems like they needed living hosts. But with it comes another disturbing thought, the thought that perhaps, some of the bodies here were broken not because the creatures had torn them apart, but because they had been infected and the terrible aliens had ripped their way out of them. “We need more supplies. These creatures reproduced quicker than I thought. Search the place for spare power packs, ration bars, extra blasters, anything we could carry and might be of use to us. Have you tried contacting the rest of your squad, Director?”

The cold pragmatism of his voice brought Krennic back to reality. “I haven’t. But they were supposed to meet us here.”

“Do try and comm them again. We could use more people,” he said, but something flickered in his expression, something too close to _worry_ , and that was enough to set Krennic’s heart racing. Despite their differences and their rivalry, and the bad blood between them, the Grand Moff—admittedly—had been useful so far, proving himself to be calm and collected in the crisis, and having enough foresight to not only kill the infected Ensign before she could infect them, but also to prevent Lieutenant Koor from making physical contact with her. He was also quick to action, all things considering, and that is something that Krennic valued. He gave him an affirmative, already keying his comm, and the Grand Moff turned to the third member of their party, who had emptied the contents of his stomach—whatever was left of it—on the floor, his face pale and devoid of colour under the artificial light of the barracks.

“I hope you still have the datacard you took from my office earlier with you, Lieutenant. I see that you’ve lost the datapads, but I suppose we should make do with the datacard.”

It took some time for the young man to find his voice again, but he managed a nod, his voice hoarse and weary around the edges. “I still have it, sir.”

“Good,” Tarkin said, satisfied. At the same time, Krennic was still trying to reach the squad leader. The comm works just fine and the frequency still works, but no one picks up, and with every try, he felt the cold fear that had reared its ugly head earlier slowly settling down in the pit of his stomach, like tiny rocks. 

“There’s no answer,” Krennic told him, frustrated. Where in the galaxy could they be? He knows that he had ordered them to secure the upper command decks earlier, but surely by now they should be on their way here. And with their armour—superior than that of a common trooper—and the exceptional firepower that they carry, combined with their equally exceptional physical prowess and training, they should have been impossible to defeat. He refused to think that, in an event of combat with the creatures, his prestigious Death Trooper had somehow _lost_. There was simply no way for them to lose.

“Then we must consider them lost,” Tarkin voiced in response, giving shape to Krennic’s fear. He clenched his fist, still unable to believe it. “We _must_ move on. Now that we have properly identified the threat, I believe that it is time for us to find the way to defeat them and deliver the killing blow, once and for all. And for that, we needed to find a place where we could formulate our plans.”

“And rest,” the Lieutenant chimed in, still pale, but some colour seemed to have returned to his cheeks. “We must rest a little, sir, if we are to defeat these…creatures.”

“Are we seriously going after these creatures alone? We don’t even know if they have a weakness to begin with!” Krennic expressed, refusing to acknowledge the cold fear that had gripped his heart. The way the malformed creature burst out of the woman’s chest, the way she clutched it when she was still alive…he felt his stomach churn again. This has been a mistake. He should have gone to the overbridge and barricaded himself there, safe behind the blast doors, reinforcement at hand. “We _should_ go to the overbridge. We’ll have a better chance there.”

“No, Grand Moff Tarkin is right,” Lieutenant Koor interjected, getting to his feet. “We’ve seen the way these creatures massacred people, sir. We’ve seen… _that_ …torn its way out of Ensign Pax’s body. We can’t go to the overbridge. They’ll kill everyone when we do, and then they’ll kill us too. We have to stop them from infecting more people.”

“Yes, I believe Lieutenant Koor is correct, Director. There is no better chance up there in the overbridge. And if the doors have been sealed, then we have to go the long way around. We don’t know yet just how many of those creatures are out there now in the open. That would be dangerous and time-consuming. It wouldn’t be a wise move.”

“What wouldn’t be a wise move is to go on a wild rancor chase after these creatures, without knowing their exact weakness or a reinforcement at hand. We have to get the situation under control, _not_ jeopardising what little we have left of it further.”

“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, Director,” Tarkin responded, the ghost of a smile touching his features. There was something menacing there, something predatory. “A good hunter can take down his quarry if he uses the information he already had wisely.”

“And that’s where _you’re_ wrong,” Krennic retorted, biting out the words. “You didn’t exactly give me the information that you promised earlier. You’ve dragged us all the way here and revealed nothing. You kept all the information to yourself, and yet _you_ insisted that you were in charge and you had the informed judgment to make all the important calls. Tell me, Governor, why should I trust you?” he jabbed a finger in the other man’s direction angrily. “We don’t have a lot of trust between us to begin with, what makes _you_ think that I would follow you blindly? What makes you think that I’d trust you not to simply push me in the way of one of these creatures the next time we encountered them?”

He could see a flash of anger in Tarkin’s eyes, but this time he met his gaze defiantly, standing his ground. There was too much that they— _he_ —didn’t know, too many uncharted areas, and Krennic wasn’t very keen on sticking around until Tarkin decided that he wasn’t useful anymore and chose his fate for him. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, think about all the horrible ways that this might end badly, especially if he decided to go at it alone with only two of his Death Troopers, but at least if he did that, he’d do it himself, not waiting until someone he’d failed to murder in the past in a small war he engineered just for him decided to truly return the favour and pull the trigger. This was bad enough as it is, it was even more terrible that he had to be stuck in it with Tarkin, out of all the people in the galaxy. He supposed that the only thing that could be worse was to have Vader join the party. But the last they heard from him was that he was in a highly classified location with the Emperor, protecting him and the rest of the Imperial Court.

“This isn’t a matter of trust, Director,” Tarkin started, managed to rein himself in. “I thought I’d made it plenty clear that this was a matter of survival. And make no mistake, I am perfectly capable of surviving this onslaught by myself, and I will deliver the killing blow and eliminate the creatures, but you have…some knowledge that I did not have. You have expertise in weaponry, and I have my suspicions about these creatures. I will need them.”

That was the closest thing to an admittance of his worth that Krennic would ever get from the Grand Moff, but that did not satisfy him. He pressed on. “But I can’t help you with anything if you won’t give me all the information, Tarkin. Tell me about the new reports and show me the recording, and _I_ will decide if I want to help you.”

“When will you realise that this _isn’t_ about you, Director?” Tarkin bit out, and for one moment, Krennic thought that he was about to go for it, and he braced himself, but the other man regained his composure. “This is about our survival, the survival of the Empire. We’ve wasted enough time as it with our petty squabbles. But if that is what you wanted, then you can have it,” he conceded, fury still flashing in his eyes, but a cold one. “We’ll find the nearest holoprojector. I will show you the recording from the Chimaera. I believe it will be very instructive.”

“I still need your word that you’re not going to kill me on the first chance you get,” Krennic demanded, and he could see that Tarkin is losing his patience, strained enough as it is. But despite the triumph he felt and the smugness he suppressed, he did feel the need to hear it from the other man.

“You have my word, Director Krennic.”

_But you didn’t ask for mine_ , Krennic thought, absently, but nodded, smiling slightly at Tarkin’s words. “Then it’s settled. We’ll go to the nearest data station.”

“Yes. Then we’ll formulate a plan.” Tarkin said, straightening himself up. His gaze landed on Lieutenant Koor, who had been listening to their conversation with avid interest, although somewhat bewildered. He looked sufficiently embarrassed when the Grand Moff’s gaze found him. “Why are you still standing around, Lieutenant? I thought I told you not to waste any more time. Go and find anything that might be of use to us.”

“Yes, sir,” Koor said, nodding and looking abashed. “I was just…I heard an odd noise earlier. I was thinking about it. I wondered…what could it be, sir.”

There was an unvoiced, barely formed fear underscoring those words, and Krennic thought back to the Lieutenant’s distracted expression earlier, when he asked him what’s wrong, but Tarkin put an end to it before it had a name. “Don’t think too much about it, Lieutenant. We have to do our duty. Now go.”

The young man nodded and scurried away, and Krennic didn’t wait for Tarkin to repeat his order this time. Briefly, he, too, wondered absently of what it could be, but the thought was quickly drowned by other thoughts, and eventually consumed by the focus of doing his task.

It was a welcome distraction from all the things that he’d seen, but he wondered if this was all just the tip of an iceberg.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd really love some comments & suggestions, let me know what you think. Thanks for reading! hmu @ tumblr: orsonkraennic


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trio of stowaways found their way inside the Death Star, while elsewhere, Krennic, Tarkin, and the young Lieutenant dealt with the aftermath of their discovery. Tarkin imparted some vital information regarding the creatures to Krennic, and at the same time, they had to come to terms with their uneasy but necessary truce and the fact that they were stuck together for an undetermined amount of time. Another unexpected encounter changes everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a chapter heavy in dialogue and exposition, so be warned. That's kind of why it took me forever to write this, lol. Anyway, just a heads-up, this fic is heading towards the Tarkin/Krennic direction (FINALLY), but for the most part it would be secondary to the main plot, which is ALIENS, so yeah. There probably won't be much of it in this fic anyways. No one has time to do anything in the Xenomorph apocalypse. But it'd be there.
> 
> Enjoy!

The hallways were deserted, although the blaring of the alarms was a marked change from the silent stagnancy of the hangar.

This, too, was a strange oddity. She had stayed here, in the station, for ten standard months, not a very long time in terms of an undercover mission, and she might as well stayed there for a standard year or even more, if not for the sudden appearance of the…creatures. Security had been extra tough, and she had been well briefed on the level of security that the Director maintained over the project, but the doctored scandocs and credentials, along with her own cautiousness and perceptiveness had carried her through. Inside the station, she had cultivated useful allies—two of which was with her as they exited the hangar and into the battle station proper—and stayed well out of trouble, her cover remaining intact although naturally threatened a couple of times during the course of the mission. It was just as well. This wasn’t her first undercover mission, and, she hoped, would not be the last.

However, the bodies that she encountered earlier—the ones that weren't her doing—planted seeds of doubt in her mind. If the creatures were half as malevolent and lethal as she had seen, if there were more than a couple of them around, if the station had been just as compromised as the moon below—after the outbreak, she and Mathias had been called to reinforced the garrison there—if the bodies were the fate of everyone on board…

“This is weird,” Hess remarked, curiosity and puzzlement mingled in his voice as he stayed close to her, blaster drawn. “You know, I’ve always imagined this place to be a little more lively. Not that I’ve actually had gone inside before.”

“Why, were you expecting checkpoints?” Mathias replied, trudging not far from him, throwing a cautious look behind his back. Despite the attempt of lightheartedness, there was an unmistakable edge in his voice, and Shayna could see that his serious face was drawn even more tightly than usual. She knows that he privately would have wished for more firepower in form of a rifle or an extra blaster.

“That’s sort of the impression I get from you Imperials,” the shorter man quipped, giving the helmetless stormtrooper something of a grin. Shayna watched him cautiously even as she led the way. “Obsessed with checkpoints. Don’t you think so, Shayna?”

His tone was casual, but something in it sets her on edge, and she gave him a curt nod. There was a glint, too, in his eyes, something that she didn’t much like. “If you had time to make cheeky remarks, you’d have time to watch our back. Or did you forget that we weren’t here to lollygag and gape at the sights?”

“You didn’t have to be so prickly,” Hess said in return, giving her a mock frown. “This is a merry party we got here.”

She threw him a warning glance, to which he replied with a puzzled look. She quickened her pace, ignoring the stare that she felt burning at her back. She had met him some five standard months ago when she was ordered to inspection duty. He was a civilian, a pilot, worked odd jobs for the Empire here and there. He had apparently gained enough credentials with them to be entrusted with the perilous and highly secretive task to ferry the crystals shipment from Jedha to the battle station, despite his status as a nonmilitary personnel, although he’d dropped hints here and there that he might have tricked the Imperials into it. As far as Shayna was concerned, Hess wasn’t even his real name. But she doesn’t really care, he had proven himself to be a resourceful ally and besides, Shayna wasn’t her actual name, either. 

They had a mutually beneficial relationship up until now, in which he supplied her with information that might be useful to the Alliance, especially pertaining to the crystals, and she, in turn, gave him information from the inside of the battle station, dropping crumbs about who she’d actually worked for here and there, trying to gauge his interest. But that’s where she went wrong. He was more perceptive than she thought, and even now Shayna felt that he was on to her.

“You okay?” Mathias said, matching his pace to hers, his voice bringing her out of her reverie. He lowered his voice. “I still don’t know why you insist on bringing him along. He was indeed responsible for bringing us back here, although I still think that borrowing a ship is more feasible in the long run than hitching a ride in that supply ship. I don’t know what you actually see in him.”

She forced a small smile, meeting his gaze, finding concern in there as well as suspicion. “He knows the override code, Mathias. And…he’s not the easiest person to get along with, but he makes for a useful ally. You’ll see.”

Her companion didn’t seem convinced, and that the fact that she dodged his question about her own state didn’t escape him, but he gave her a tentative nod. “If you say so. I trusted you,” he added and bit his lower lip. He already opened his mouth to say something more, and Shayna dreaded it, but Hess’ voice cuts their conversation short.

“If you guys are done chit-chatting, I think we got a small problem here,” he said, sarcastically. He’d stopped some distance behind them, his blaster drawn, his back on them. Shayna immediately turned around, and as she did so, a stormtrooper appeared from round the bend, followed by another. She didn’t think, she just pulled the trigger, and Hess took down the other. She felt Mathias tensed beside her, putting a hand on her arm.

“We should set our blasters on stun. We don’t want to kill more people. One of them could be our friends,” he pointed out, and she wanted to tell him that none of them are _her_ friends, but she bit her tongue and gave him a grudging nod.

“Alright,” she told him, feeling the lie burn in the back of her tongue. It shouldn’t hurt, she thought, it was just another lie, a necessity if she wanted to keep her cover intact, and achieve her objective in their small trip. “Set your blaster on stun, Hess, we didn’t want to hurt more people.”

The pilot stared at her defiantly for a second, but then shrugged and did as she asked. Shayna did the same to her own blaster, grateful for the chance to avoid Mathias’ gaze on her. “Whatever you say, boss,” Hess told her. “It doesn’t matter either way.”

“Thank you,” Mathias said to her, briefly touching her arm, relief palpable in his voice. She made the mistake of looking at him, for the split of a second, and the look in his eyes—

She looked away. She was almost grateful when another stormtrooper appeared, and Hess announced its presence. He hadn’t even finished his sentence when she shot the trooper, and he crumpled to the floor like a doll, gleaming white armour on silver. Then another appeared, and another, and she barked at them to move, firing her blaster, forgetting.

“This is finally getting lively,” Hess remarked, in-between shots, grinning. “I thought that the aliens had gotten them all.”

She briefly thought back to the bodies they’d found in the hangar, broken and deserted, and she felt the thought that crossed her mind the first time she saw them— _what kind of creature did this_ —returned, and she felt more determined than ever to destroy these creatures. She did not know yet if there is salvation—if there is hope—but if the battle station is indeed capable of what the Empire and the kyber crystals—mined by force—had implied, all the time when she was here, if it was indeed capable of what the Alliance had theorised, then it could be a solution. The cost was unthinkable, and her heart clenched at the thought of all the people down there, of the creatures without mercy, without a flicker of sentience or compassion, breaking their bodies like dolls, like they were nothing, but it was a necessary sacrifice to be made. A necessary evil.

Just like what she was doing to Mathias. 

She snapped out of her reverie when the man in question shot a trooper down before she could shoot her, Hess covering their back as they headed deeper into the station, and she let loose a shot of her own when another trooper appeared, her heart thrumming in her ears in the same beat as her footsteps. They stopped, for a moment, and Mathias glanced at her.

“Looks like we’ve got some fighting to do,” he remarked, gaze trained in the direction where the stormtroopers came from, and Shayna felt her heart clenching again.

“It’s a long way to the overbridge,” she said, casting him the ghost of a smile. “But we’ll get there.”

“We will,” he affirmed, and she knows that he believed in it—he believed in _her_.

Part of her wanted to tell him that his faith in her had been grossly misplaced, that she had been lying to him all along, but she knows better than to do that. She swallowed the words, a bitter taste in the back of her throat, along with a certainty, burning in her like a North star, like the sword of the angels in the stories: she had come to think of him as her friend.

And she will betray him.

* * *

Much to Krennic’s chagrin, the Grand Moff was right about one other thing: the ravaged barracks had indeed yielded some items that might be of use to them in the coming journey ahead. Vaguely, he still wondered why he let himself be dragged into this. He still doesn’t know where are they going, specifically, after the other man had imparted the information that he’d promised him, and he wondered about his motives, thought about the look on his face earlier before they left his office, before all the madness had truly begun for him. He, too, doesn’t know why he so convinced that they—these creatures—can be defeated, and although Krennic saw some use in trying to find out more information about the aliens, at the same time he also believed that there was no need to put themselves more at risk—to risk their life and limbs unnecessarily—the state of the battle station and, possibly, the entire Empire as it is. 

He loathed to admit it, but he was beginning to think that the young Lieutenant was right. Much as he hated to surrender—the mere thought of leaving the Death Star, _his_ life’s project behind to the creatures, incited the earlier fury he felt when they first arrived at the barracks—to leave everything behind and turn tail unlike what an Imperial officer was supposed to do, he started to think that the General, having ordered the rest of them to evacuate, had the right idea after all.

_This_ war felt impossible to win, and it had only just begun. Still, Krennic kept the thought to himself.

“I discovered some medpacs, sir. I think they might be of use to us later,” Koor said, sensibly, although Krennic didn’t fail to notice how his eyes had darted, briefly, to the dead woman on the floor when he entered the room, the unfortunate Ensign whom the Grand Moff had shot earlier before the half-formed alien creature burst out of her. Something in his mind reeled at the thought—rebelled against the memory—but Krennic pushed it aside. “And I think the Director liberated some spare power packs from the storage boxes.”

They were regrouping in the spot where Krennic and the Lieutenant had found the surviving Ensign earlier, as Tarkin had ordered. Every moment they spent in the ravaged barracks—indeed, the doomed deck—was a moment infected with dread and anxiety, as they had no idea how many of the infected were around, or how many of those creatures were in their proximity. There were nine earlier that day, he reflected, when he stepped into Tarkin’s office scarcely a couple of hours back, nine that became a nightmare of station-wide proportions, but they had no idea of knowing how many of those creatures are out there now. Considering the carnage they’d inflicted in the barracks on this particular deck, and the speed in which they infected the healthy, the nigh overwhelming dread and anxiety that he felt was well-deserved.

“I did,” he said, stepping inside behind the Lieutenant, his two Death Troopers staying outside the partially closed door, taking sentinel duty. “And I found a weapons cache as well. I took the liberty to take a couple of flash grenades along. They might come in handy.”

“I very much doubt it,” Tarkin remarked, dryly. He had been conducting his own search, and Krennic noticed that he had an extra blaster tucked in his belt. He briefly cast a glance around the room—somehow, he was quite certain that the Grand Moff had liberated it from one of the dead men. “Remember, we would be fighting in close quarters. We have only an inkling of how the plasma from our blasters affected these creatures—the malformed one earlier notwithstanding—but we do not know yet just how effective they would be against a horde of these creatures. And a flash grenade would certainly attract more of them.”

“Isn’t that’s what you wanted to do?” Krennic blurted, irritated. Tarkin might have given him his word that he wouldn’t betray him—as far as that would still benefit him in some way, Krennic assumed—but that still doesn’t make him any less fury-inducing. And from the lift of his eyebrow, it seems like the feeling’s mutual. “Draw them out so you could find their leader and kill it?”

Something like an amused look crossed his expression, but that might as well be a trick of the light. “A rather astute observation, but not in so crude a manner, Director.”

There was a definite insult there, something that Krennic had heard often from him, and he opened his mouth, already preparing an acid remark when the Lieutenant cuts him off. “Sorry for interrupting, sirs, but I think we really should get going. We don’t know if…more of those creatures are around. Or the infected.”

Their gaze both fell on the younger man, but this time, he didn’t flinch. Something seemed to have happened inside him after the appearance and the subsequent defeat of the malformed creature bursting out from Ensign Pax’s body earlier, a marked change, and he seemed to have regained his courage, his dark eyes shining with determination. It was at least a lot better than the pale, terrified look he wore before, and despite Krennic’s feeling of impending doom—something that he furiously denied—he thought that the young Lieutenant probably needed it, considering what’s ahead. 

“He’s right,” Krennic admitted, albeit somewhat grudgingly. “We have to get going. The nearest data station would have a working holoprojector, and it would not be far from here. Deck N-17. Only three decks ahead.”

“Very well. We’ll head there,” Tarkin said, already started pacing. “Show me the weapons cache before we leave. I have a…particular weapon in mind I would like to carry, if there is one there.” 

Krennic opened his mouth to inquire about it, but he was inevitably distracted when the other man stopped in front of him. Then, to his surprise, Tarkin pulled the spare blaster he found from his belt and pressed it to his hand. “That customised blaster of yours would not see you through,” he said by way of explanation, lips pressed into a thin, unreadable line, and Krennic looked at him, strangely feeling more puzzled than angered. “You’ll run out of shots before you could shoot one of those creatures down.”

It was odd enough as it is, and the man’s calm expression revealed nothing, but as fast and as sudden as it happens, it ended, and Tarkin has already started to walk away, his posture stiff as always, a perfect soldier through and through. “Why?” Krennic asked after him before he could hold himself back, half-turning, gaze fixed on his back. He palmed the blaster Tarkin gave him lightly, another standard issue one, knowing every nook and cranny of its anatomy. “You could let me run out of ammo,” he pointed out, lips curled into a thin, ironic smile. “That’s a good enough accident to push me out of your way forever.”

The other man stopped dead in his tracks, his back rigid. There was a momentary pause before he broke the silence. “I gave you my word, Director,” he said, tone as stiff as his composure. “After all, it is in my best interest to keep you uninfected, since that means less of those creatures around.”

“You’re growing soft, old man,” he taunted, but his tone was a fraction softer than Krennic intended it to be. “Next thing you know I’ll shoot you in the back.”

Tarkin scoffed, turning slightly. “Crude, as always,” he said, his tone impenetrable and his expression hard, but Krennic thought that his tone wasn’t as hard as he intended it to be, either. Or as it usually is when he’s speaking to him. “You have no style, Krennic. Now be quiet and show me the weapons cache.”

He started towards the door again, but not before he let out a warning. “If you show any signs of infection in any way, or tried to betray me in any manner, rest assured, Director, I will kill you without any hesitation.”

“That’s reassuring,” Krennic remarked, dryly, checking the power pack in the blaster pistol he was given. “Well, what are you waiting for? You heard the Grand Moff,” he said to Koor, who once more looked as if he was caught eavesdropping on an important conversation. “Let’s go.”

The young Lieutenant gave him an affirmative, looking a little sheepish and perhaps also the slightest bit curious, but otherwise not asking any questions. Krennic followed Tarkin, trying not to think of what lies ahead.

And if it was even more terrible than he thought.

* * *

Despite his expectations and mounting tension, and the specter of the carnage still hovering over their shoulder, the walk to deck N-17 was not memorable in any way. They encountered none of the creatures—much to Krennic’s relief and Tarkin’s vague disappointment, and Koor’s puzzlement—and other than the distant blaring of alarms, the hallways were quiet and devoid of any other life form, silvers and blacks interspersed with the white slits of artificial light seemingly going on into forever. There were no corpses, no traces of fighting, no black goop. No blood or viscera splattered on the durasteel walls. After the scene of the ravaged deck, normality was a jarring, ghastly change.

Except for the fact that there were no other officers, troopers, tech or maintenance crew around to be seen, everything was perfect, spotless, normal.

“This isn’t right,” Krennic said after Tarkin keyed the door leading to the data station. “Where are all the troopers? We should have met at least several of them on our way here, or when we were heading towards N-14.”

The door opened, and the Grand Moff shot him a look. “We have to assume the worst,” he said, stepping into the room. Krennic followed suit. “If the rest of your squad is missing…then we must reasonably assume that the rest of the battle station is fighting this threat. Or it is simply that the number of the creatures are growing, from our ranks.”

There was something like a hidden fury underscoring his words, and Krennic shared his sentiment. “Or they had evacuated,” Koor supplied, and Krennic can’t help but note the gleam of youthful hope in his dark eyes as he followed them both into the data station. The door closed behind them, leaving the two Death Troopers on sentinel duty. “General Leandar had said that we had been provided with the rendezvous coordinates. That could be the case, sir.”

“Perhaps,” Tarkin said, simply, seated himself in front of a computer. “Why don’t you get the holoprojector ready for us, Lieutenant? I have some things to discuss first with Director Krennic. Off you go, now.”

He looked at them for a moment, confused, but then a flicker of understanding dawns on his face, and he nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ll get it to it right away.”

After he left, Tarkin beckons for Krennic to come closer, gesturing at the empty seat near him. “Take a seat, Director. We have quite a few things to talk about. I know you rather despised committees and discussions, but this is what you asked for earlier—“ he pulled out his datapad, lips momentarily curved into a thin smile. “—and you’ll find this…intriguing. You’ve seen the creature earlier.”

“I’ve seen the way it ripped its way out from the dead woman’s body,” he said, eyeing the empty chair and the other man suspiciously, hesitating briefly but seated himself down beside him. “An abomination.”

“A lot of things in nature can be classified as that,” the Grand Moff said, a thoughtful look briefly crossed his angular features, before his gaze focused on him again, sharp and unrelenting. “Even you and I are abominations to certain types of animal life forms.”

“But is it _natural_?” he said, gripping the arm of his chair. “From the way it moves, and the way it reproduced, and its body configuration—“

“I have a theory about that,” Tarkin cuts him off, opening something in his datapad. “And I see now that we are quite on the same page, Director. But we will talk about that later. Now I wanted to ask you: what else have you gathered?”

Briefly, he wondered if this was another test or a trap, but the look on the Grand Moff’s face—for once—tells him otherwise. He swallowed his pride and his suspicion both. “The liquid. We’ve seen them everywhere in the barracks in Deck N-14. The dead woman, Ensign Pax, has it on her. You asked the Lieutenant if he had any of those on him before you ordered him to step back.” he paused, momentarily, trying to gauge the other man’s reaction. Tarkin motioned for him to continue. “I would have conjectured that the black liquid was some sort of a catalyst for the infection to begin.”

“Very good,” Tarkin said, nodding with a curt approval. “I would have thought that Xenobiology wasn’t your specialty, Director. But you managed. Yes, the latest report I have read from Coruscant has confirmed that the black liquid is how the infection spreads and, indeed, started. Contact with the substance is undoubtedly lethal and as of now, there is no cure, nothing that could inhibit the spread of the infection in any way. We have tried every means available to us in the Empire’s disposal. So far, we have found nothing."

“You inquired about blood, too, to the Lieutenant,” Krennic said in response, ignoring the slight to his intelligence this time, instead focusing on processing what he just heard and what he’d seen earlier, trying to connect the dots. “Was it a secondary catalyst?”

“I suspected so,” Tarkin replied, placing his hand under his chin, resting his datapad on his thigh. “There is no real evidence in the reports, but I have my own reasons to believe that it could be a secondary means of infection.”

“What else did the _latest report_ say?”

If the other man noticed the subtle snide in Krennic’s voice, he didn’t respond to it. There was an odd sort of hesitance to him that wasn’t present earlier, if ever, when Tarkin finally speaks again, and his countenance indicated that he was still deep in thought. “There is an old Jedi legend about it. Something about a threat from deep space, a catastrophe that will destroy every living being.”

“The Jedi are all dead,” Krennic said, irritated. Despite that, he can’t help but feel curious about it. The Lieutenant would have been too young to remember the Clone Wars, but not they. In his memory, the end of the war felt like yesterday, and as soon as it begins, another already takes its place. And then the creatures appeared. “We’ve made sure that they are, and we’ve destroyed the remnants of their memories. Their legends mean nothing to us, Tarkin. You know this.”

“Of course I know that they are, Director. Have you forgotten that the Emperor trusted me personally?” he said, sneering, and Krennic felt a snarl coming, but this time he held himself back. They had a truce, no matter how tenuous, and now it seems that they share a common objective, as well. Not to mention the common threat posed by the creatures. “I know that the Grand Admiral would have disagreed, but he is not here. Legends are legends, and Jedi legends held less worth than a decomposed loth cat. However, the report had somehow seen it fit to cite that.”

“Forget about that,” Krennic said, waving a hand dismissively. “Now tell me what the rest of the report said, and other matters relevant to this discussion—“

His inquiry and their discussion were cut short by Koor’s return, who once more looked self-conscious for interrupting them, but quickly steeled himself. “Apologies for interrupting, sirs, but the holoprojector is quite ready.”

“Well, it looks like the rest of our discussion has to wait,” Tarkin said, and Krennic was about to override him, but he cuts him off. “The recording will explain a fair number of things to you. Most importantly, it contains a clue that pertains to our interest. Now come along, we should not waste any more time.”

The holoprojector was smaller than the one he was aiming for, but the room was a tech data station instead of one of the conference rooms on the command deck, and therefore it was to be expected. It was mounted in the back, on a desk inside a small office. The shutters have been shut, presumably by the Lieutenant, and the projector was already on, humming with energy. The room was a tight fit for all three of them, and the Lieutenant looked vaguely uncomfortable, as if he doesn’t belong there, but he stood straight-backed and ready, near the door, as Krennic and Tarkin gathered around the desk.

“What I’m about to show you—” Tarkin started, his cold blue eyes landed first on Krennic—lingering for a bit—before meeting Koor’s, briefly. “—is highly classified information, and it is strictly on a need-to-know basis. I can tell you this: I am the only one who had seen the recording other than the Emperor’s Inner Circle and presumably the Emperor himself. It is top secret and, I believe, might hold a key to our understanding of the creatures.”

“Then I should wait outside, sir—“ the young Lieutenant speaks, but the Grand Moff silenced him with a glance.

“No need, boy,” he said, reaching for the projector. “Since you are stuck with us, and duty demands you to stay, you might as well learn a vital truth about these creatures. I could use an extra hand, and as you know, the Director is a stubborn, unreliable sort.”

Krennic bristled at the insult, vaguely noticing that while Koor swallowed visibly, bracing himself for another confrontation between them, Tarkin’s lips curved up into the ghost of a smile. “Might I _remind_ you that I found the weapons’ cache, help you found your precious weapon—“ he gestured at the thing, propped up against the desk in one corner within Tarkin’s reach, tip as sharp as the man who’d taken it from the cache. “—and _my_ Death Troopers had defeated that half-formed creature earlier, not you.”

“I was simply winding you up, Krennic,” Tarkin said, and Krennic knows that he was laughing in the privacy of his mind. _That_ makes him feel even more irritated. “You may take that as a joke if you will. Now, if you’re quite finished throwing your tantrum, I will begin the recording.”

Krennic glared perceptibly at the Grand Moff, who had already moved to start the recording. He swallowed his annoyance and directed his focus towards the holoprojector, and he heard the sound of Koor’s footsteps as the Lieutenant took a step closer. He held his breath as the image appeared, and he could feel that the younger Lieutenant did the same—

The image had an abrupt quality to it, and it was a little grainy—Tarkin had magnified it by a fair bit, but not so much as to ruin the quality of the image—but he quickly trained his eyes on it. It shows the tall figure of a male humanoid in Imperial Navy uniform with a shoulder accent—the Grand Admiral—with a standard-issue blaster pistol on his hand, opening fire to unseen enemies at first with a methodical precision, his gaze, intense even in the recording, tracking the movement of those enemies. It lasted for a few seconds before the previously unseen assailants entered the stage, the same creatures that Krennic had seen in the earlier recordings and reports—the same creature that he had seen bursting out from the dead Ensign’s chest—moving with deadly speed and grace, as the Imperial Grand Admiral intensifies his fire. He was surrounded by the creatures as his shots glanced off them—only some of those shots, presumably—although he was certainly not alone, since one of the creatures dropped suddenly, evidently being shot from behind by someone else off-screen. It seemed like a dead-end battle, although the Admiral did not give up, continuing to open fire towards the aliens even as he was forced to take a step back. 

There was a moment of pause as he suddenly stopped shooting, as if realising the hopelessness of it, or his blaster nearly overheats and he was realising that, but then all of a sudden, the creatures dropped, dead and unmoving, into the floor, and a young man in the same Navy uniform steps in—

The security recording stops there. Krennic replayed the series of events in his mind, briefly, letting out a breath that he didn’t know he was holding. In its own way, the recording he had just seen was even worse than the ones he’d seen, back before these creatures had the audacity to invade and desecrate his battle station. There were a number of disturbing things and equally alarming implications contained in the recording, chiefly the sheer number of these creatures—there were only six, seven of them in the transmitted image, but it was fair to assume that there were many, many more of them, considering the way the Grand Admiral was reacting—and he could already imagine them _here_ , causing not only death but also devastation and chaos, and the lethal grace and speed with which they moved…it makes him shudder to think that this was what they were facing. 

_This_ was what the Empire was now facing.

“Do you need a replay, Director?” Tarkin’s dry voice brought him back to reality, and he met the other man’s gaze. To his surprise, he found a gleam of genuine curiosity there. “Or was that quite enough for you?”

“That was quite enough for me,” he said, harsher than he intended it to be, but did not regret it. Despite the… _concern_ …that the Grand Moff had shown earlier, and the way he was supposedly teasing him—winding him up—the former was borne out of pragmatism more than any genuine concern for his well-being, and they are most decidedly not friends. They have too much history for that. “But I thank you for the offer, Governor Tarkin.”

“Have you learnt anything useful, boy?” Tarkin said, turning his attention towards Koor, who’d similarly looked like he’d just been brought back to reality. 

“I think so, sir,” he said, soberly. “There are more of them than we think.”

“They are a _virus_ ,” Tarkin said, with an undertone of suppressed fury. “They infected healthy human—and humanoid—hosts, kill them slowly while they gestate inside of them, and after they rip their way out, an action which will most certainly kill the human hosts, they start the process again, infecting other humans and killing the rest. While they are most efficient, they are a threat to the Empire.”

“We already know this,” Krennic said. “And I am not entirely sure that _efficient_ is the word I’d use.”

“They are certainly more efficient than _your_ creations,” Tarkin remarked, waving him off. “I have half a mind to wound one grievously and capture it, and perhaps we could see if it’d…react to our torture droids or if we could incentivise it one way or another, but as it stands, the Emperor orders me to kill each and every single one of them."

“You wanted to try to turn them to _our_ side?” Koor blurted out before Krennic could respond to Tarkin’s slight. “I mean…no offense, but that sounds a bit impossible, sir.”

“This is war, Lieutenant. We will use any means necessary to win. My only regret is that we didn’t come up with this idea first. We could have eliminated so many Rebel terrorists before they turn into a blight. We could have effectively wiped them out while they spread fear and terror amongst themselves. A most effective weapon.” 

It was clear what he means by _idea_ , and it wasn’t hard to see that he means not to use the creatures against their enemies—although that was one of the implications of it—but he expressed genuine regret of not coming up with this idea first, this…idea of a biological weapon that infected healthy hosts and turns them into lethal predators. Krennic felt fury started building inside of him, not only because he didn’t express it first—Tarkin cuts him off earlier during their supposed discussion when he was trying to say that these creatures are as much a weapon as the battle station they were standing in—but also because of the slight he gave him, and it was a professional slight as much as a personal one. Krennic struggles to contain himself and failed.

“ _We_ have an experimental project with that sort of biological weaponry,” he bit out, once more feeling angry at the other man, belittled and put into a corner. “But if you’d care to refresh your memory, Governor, the funding was stopped because _this_ battle station was our top priority, and we serve at the Emperor’s pleasure—“

Their argument was cut short when all the lights suddenly went out, leaving them in total darkness. He could hear the rustle of the Grand Moff’s blaster being drawn, and Krennic subsequently did the same. His mind was still trying to process what was happening,when the secondary power generators kicked in and the emergency lights went on, blinking slowly and almost lazily at first but then all at once, leaving them awash in a dim reddish-white light, the light of a faraway sun. The small office felt even more cramped in the aftermath of the sudden blackout, and outside the door, the data station was sterile and empty, touched by the same reddish-white light, rows of computers and related equipment standing vigil in the deserted room. 

And there was silence, encompassing and infinite, pressing on them from all sides like invisible enemies. The alarms had stopped blaring outside.

“What’s happening?” Koor broke the silence first, one hand on his holstered blaster. He looked around the office as if looking for answers, and then looked at them, confusion and surprise written plainly on his face.

“The station has now gone into full emergency mode,” Krennic said, evenly, surprised by the sudden calm that has suddenly descended on him. “The secondary generators have been activated. This means that both the sublight drive and the hyperdrive has been disabled since now most of its power would be directed towards life support systems and protective emergency measures towards the reactor. This battle station is fully capable of functioning like a habitable moon or a planet, however…” he trailed off, tapping the side of his blaster nervously. “Something must have happened to the main generators.”

“Would the creatures have broken into them?” the Lieutenant questioned, looking just as agitated and tense. “Where are the main generators located? If they have broken into them, then the reactor—“

“Quiet, boy,” Tarkin hissed, and Koor fell silent, but Krennic narrowed his eyes at the Grand Moff, already opening his mouth to interject him. However, before he could, he was cut short by an odd scraping noise, as if something sharp was being dragged on the metal wall. He naturally tried to pinpoint the source of the noise, and both Tarkin and Koor was doing the same, casting glances around the small room and the ceiling, their bodies tense, Koor already raising his blaster, Tarkin reaching out for the vibrospear. Krennic remembered the gaping hole in the wall of the second barracks—the sheer _unnaturalness_ of it—the partially jammed door in the third barracks, the blood and viscera splattered on the floor and on the walls. It was useless to jam the door when your enemy could tear apart durasteel with their bare hands, he thought, although that must have taken some effort.

And there would be more than one of them.

He felt his grip tightening around his own blaster pistol, briefly wondering if it had any use against the horde of these creatures. The noise slowly receded into a distance, but his grip didn’t slacken. Silence descended, lonely and terrible.

Krennic broke the silence first. “We can’t stay here, either. We have to keep moving.”

“For once, I’m inclined to agree,” Tarkin said. “I would much prefer if we found the creatures first instead of the other way around.”

“I don’t like _that_ prospect either,” Koor expressed, lowering his blaster, but there was still the residue of fear in his dark eyes. “But if we’re going to proceed with this, sir, we’re going to need to set up temporary camp. And I think this place is as good as any. Whatever that noise was, it had gone away. Perhaps it was simply a stray trooper. This place is…” he gestured at the open door leading to the empty room behind him. “Well, it’s clean, for one. It’s a little out of the way, too. We could set watch duty, sir, call the Death Troopers in. We’ll lock the door. I could take first watch.”

“No, we can’t stay here,” Krennic said, lowering his own blaster, but did not feel any sort of relief, either. In fact, he felt both restless and anxious. Whatever that noise was, it doesn’t sound good to him, and most certainly did not sound like a stray trooper, even if the Lieutenant was obviously trying to convince himself than them. “It’s too close in proximity to the ravaged barracks. We don’t know how many of the infected are nearby, and if we are still directly in their path of destruction. We have to get out of the way.”

“Much as I hated to admit it, the Director is right…for once.” Tarkin admitted, and Krennic can’t help but feeling just a smudge of triumph at his admittance. “If you wanted to set up a temporary camp, Lieutenant, you have to do it far from here. Somewhere out of the way, but which will enable you to anticipate potential attacks. And might I remind both of you that we are still missing a few key items in our supply collection.”

“Ration bars,” Koor said, and Tarkin nodded. “We didn’t find any earlier.”

“And water,” the Grand Moff added. “We certainly have to treat this like a field operation from now on, since clearly, our enemies have infiltrated this battle station. We will need food and water if we are going to hold out against them.”

_At least until they kill us first,_ Krennic thought but held his tongue. “There’s a mess hall nearby,” he instead pointed out. “Floor plan would have a mess hall a couple of decks after the barracks. That makes it two decks from here. I think that’s what we should check out next.”

“Good recall of the plans, Director,” Tarkin said, and there’s an unmistakable hint of sarcasm in his voice. “You’re earning your keep.”

“ _I_ designed this battle station,” Krennic sneered at him in return. “Of course I remember the plans.”

“Not to interrupt your important bickering, sirs,” Koor interjected, looking at both of them nervously. “But I think we’ve got more important matters to attend to. And I agree that we should go to the mess hall next.”

“It would be dangerous, boy,” Tarkin reminded him, raising an eyebrow. “Even with two Death Troopers and our firepower combined. If that noise is indeed one of the aliens, then we most certainly have a fight on our hands.”

“There’s probably more of them than just one,” Krennic added, sarcastically. “But since you vetoed my suggestion to go to the overbridge earlier, and you refused to evacuate as well, we might as well walk in there and go out in a blaze of glory.”

“More like a blaze of blood and guts,” Koor muttered under his breath, but Krennic caught the tail end of it and shot him a glare. “Oh, I said nothing…sir.” 

“Not in such a dramatic term, Director,” Tarkin said, taking the datacard out of the holoprojector. “You _do_ have a penchant for theatrics, but we aren’t performing a play. I suppose we do need to check out the mess hall next.”

“Are _you_ hungry?” Krennic asked him, pulling his leg on purpose. “Oh, you _are_ , aren’t you?”

“Quiet,” Tarkin hissed, picking up his vibrospear and giving him a chilling glare. “Let’s just get going.”

* * *

The route to the mess hall was clear, the hallways deserted and now that the alarms had stopped blaring, there was an abandoned quality about the place, as if all the people had suddenly disappeared into thin air, the silence thick and enveloping and eerie, almost as if it was a living thing. Instead of relief, it makes Krennic feel even more tense, readying himself unconsciously, bracing for the things that he knows lurked nearby, but was nowhere to be seen as of yet. _Fear_ was a creature that lives under his skin now, an itch that he can’t quite scratch, and the more he tried to push it aside—the more he tried to deny it—the harder it assaults him. Still, for the most part, Krennic managed to control himself, and it was some kind of comfort that he could see that Koor was just as tense as he was, and even the Grand Moff was noticeably edgier than he was before.

He could spot one of his Troopers up ahead, scouting, Tarkin following not far behind him with his weapon ready and his blaster pistol on his hip. The Trooper stopped first, and Tarkin soon followed. He beckons at them to come closer, and Krennic quickens his pace, anxious to see what was holding them up.

“The emergency protocols,” he remarked when he saw it, sighing. The deck up ahead was sealed, durasteel door blocking their path, a small panel with a blinking red light mounted beside of it. “I should have known.”

“I don’t get it, sir,” Koor said, slowing down when he’d caught up with both of them. “It shouldn’t have been sealed if it wasn’t that vital. The command decks and the overbridge were still a few levels up, and this deck only contained a mess hall and a couple of storage rooms and a data station, wasn’t it?”

“Unless the creatures have found their way here,” Tarkin said, grip noticeably tightening around his vibrospear. “Someone must have sealed that door.”

“Then we have to find another way,” Koor voiced, pacing restlessly. “There are other mess halls around, sir, and we could still hold on.”

“Yes, but it’d be three levels down. There’s a turbolift nearby, but we would be wasting our time.” Krennic told them, his voice betraying the irritation he tried to suppress and, without waiting for their response, he strode forward, approaching the panel. “And I know the override codes.”

“Then I suggest you’d make haste, Director,” Tarkin told him, and the commanding tone annoyed Krennic more than the unexpectedness of the sealed door. They might have gotten stuck together until stars know when—Krennic doesn’t really want to think about it, that’s a bleak future if he thought about it—and they had a truce of sorts no matter how uneasy, but he still can’t get used to the man ordering him around. As a matter of fact, he never did, the years be damned. Some days he still curses the fact that the war he engineered didn’t kill the old man. Things would have been a _lot_ easier if it did. “As you yourself have said earlier, we don’t want to waste more time.”

Krennic shot him a look. “You know the override codes as well as I do. If you want it to be quick, you might as well stop bossing me around and do it yourself.”

“ _Sir_ ,” Koor interjected, annoyance slipping into his voice. “If there are any of those creatures around—“

“Work on it, Krennic,” Tarkin ordered, briefly touching his shoulder. “We’ll watch your back. Do remember that the less time we wasted, the better.”

It was redundant to repeat that at this point, as what they’d experienced earlier had driven the point home more effectively than Tarkin himself ever could, but Krennic knew that he specifically did that to infuriate him. Biting back an acid remark, he moved closer to the panel, examining it for a brief moment before getting to work. It was familiar, and they’ve had drills before in the past, and soon enough, the system accepted the code and authorisation that he supplied it with. It gave a beep of acknowledgement—he was at least grateful that the system still works and are not down—and it felt like forever, but the red light shifted into green, and the door slid open.

The deck was clean, strips of emergency lights lighting their way, casting the hallway ahead in an ominous sickly red mixed with the blacks and the thin silvers. Their shadows disappeared in the partial darkness, only faint reminders of them appeared every now and then as they made their way into the deck.

“We should have picked up some glow rods,” Koor said, and the wisp of his voice seemed like a monstrosity in the partially dark, desolate place. 

“ _Quiet_ ,” Tarkin hissed, halted suddenly in his tracks. He pointed, with his free hand, at a spot on the floor, laid under the direct path of one of the lights, and both Krennic and Koor’s gaze followed his direction. It wasn’t immediately obvious at first, by account of the dim lighting and the subtleness of the thing he was pointing at, but there were faint scratch marks on the floor. Krennic thought back to the creature they’d encountered at the barracks, remembering how it tore its way out from the dead woman. To his surprise, the Grand Moff kneeled, inspecting the marks closer. “This was made recently,” he said, examining it, but did not extend a finger to touch it. His gaze followed the marks and Krennic followed his gaze, which stopped not too far from them. There were grooves on the floor where Tarkin fixed his gaze on, deep, regular abrasions, and it was clear as day that there was no way a human being could have made such marks. “Not of humanoid origin,” the Grand Moff said, softly, a touch of fascination in his voice. Something about it both repelled and fascinated Krennic in turn, and Tarkin’s interest had always been a terrifying, dangerous thing. He stood up, just as suddenly, dusting himself, and turned to face them. “Go to the mess hall and take what we came here for. I’ll see if I can pinpoint the exact location of this…creature.”

Koor nodded and has already looked at him to lead the way. His Troopers stood at attention, waiting to flank him. But Krennic lingered, looking at the other man, who had started focusing his attention on the marks.

“Can you take one by yourself?” he asked, surprised by his own question. He really wasn’t supposed to—their truce was only temporary, and they were only bound together by necessity. If the creature got Tarkin, well, that’s one major problem out of his hair. However, Krennic can’t deny that he felt the slightest bit of…concern. It was most definitely irritating, and he was quick to remind himself that it was because their chances of coming out of this alive were doubled if they stick together.

“ _If_ there is only one,” Tarkin said, and that was as much of an admittance that he’d ever get out of him, but still more than he’d ever gotten. “But your concern is, for the most part, unwarranted, if not _touching_. I will be fine, Director. You should concern yourself with what’s in front of you instead.”

“Of course,” Krennic told him, his tone clipped. Leave it to Tarkin to irritate him even more, he thought. “I’ll go to the mess hall with the Lieutenant.”

“Good. I’ll catch up with you soon. Take your Troopers with you.”

There was nothing more to be said, and Krennic beckons at the Lieutenant to follow him, the Death Troopers following suit. They found the mess hall soon enough. The door was left wide open, and naturally, Krennic exercised some caution—he draws his blaster and knows that Koor followed suit—as they made their way inside. It was empty, deserted, no signs of life except for a couple of meals in various stages of being eaten or drunk, most of them nutritious milks and some ration bars, abandoned in a hurry when the people consuming them had been called to their duty station earlier that day. The silence loomed large, and the sense of urgent abandonment combined with the claw marks Tarkin had discovered left him feeling even more uneasy than before. It was the calm before the storm.

“Get the ration bars and then let’s get going,” Krennic ordered the other man, shooting him a glance. “I don’t like the look of this place.”

“Yes, sir. Anything else I should be on the lookout for?”

“Anything else that might be useful and we can carry,” he told him, giving the empty hall another glance. “I’ll do the same. My Death Troopers will keep watch. And—” he added after Koor had given him another nod and started moving. “—watch your back, Lieutenant.”

It was a given, but the younger officer gave him an affirmative. “I will. You too, sir.”

* * *

The Grand Moff had joined them—Krennic can’t help but noticed that he looked vaguely disappointed, coming empty-handed to the mess hall and his weapon unbloodied, his blaster not drawn—for a little while when the commotion happened outside, and the three of them immediately tensed. They had managed to find some ration bars earlier—Krennic hated the taste, but they virtually had no other choice, and it was still better than nutritious milk—and Koor even managed to find two glow rods in the back, attaching them to his belt, without any hitch or disturbance, and when it happened, Krennic knows for sure, with a sinking feeling, that one of the creatures has found them. He’d left his Troopers for sentinel duty outside, and the sound of them opening fire was as familiar as anything in the galaxy. There were no words spoken as they hurried outside, blasters drawn, Krennic’s cloak billowing behind him. Tarkin led the way, moving with an animal grace, while the Lieutenant followed them, his movements cautious, although there was still a youthful recklessness to it. If he hadn’t seen Koor emptying his stomach earlier in the ravaged barracks, Krennic would have said that he was almost as excited about the possibility of a dangerous fight as Tarkin. 

When they arrived at the scene, both of the Troopers were firing at it, trying to hold it back, but the creature was moving in their direction on all fours with an almost preternatural speed, a predator finding its prey. None of them really think anymore, they just act, instinct kicking in, and Krennic squeezed the trigger, his shot glancing off the creature’s temple as it came at them, full speed, and he snarled. Four shots left, and he left most of the extra ammunition in a drawer in his office. He still had the other blaster that Tarkin had given him, but he disliked the mere thought of using something the Grand Moff had given him, even if it’s supposedly in his best interest. He was using his own blaster pistol out of spite rather than practicality. Beside him, Koor let out a noise of frustration as well, his own shots glancing off the creature’s glistening pitch-black hide despite his apparent determination.

There was something nightmarish about the creature, something highly unnatural and disturbing, and Krennic felt his own flight instinct slowly winning, although adrenaline fuels him, temporarily increasing his focus. For a moment, he thought that they had finally got it when one of the shots his Troopers made found its mark on the creature’s shoulder—or something that passed as that—and another, forcing it to stop in its tracks. Then in what felt like a drawn out moment although in actuality it happens in a brief instant, he could only watch in horror as the creature leaped, forcing one of the Death Troopers to the ground, its claws rending his armour while its tail, graceful and lethal, coiled around his neck—fear had stayed Krennic’s hand from firing another shot, although the other Trooper managed to fire, in vain—and drove the barbed tip to his temple. His body gave out one final violent shake before it went limp as a doll. 

Even a combination of superior armour plating, highly specialised training, and genetic engineering couldn’t save him from the creature’s might. The alien creature let out a strange sound, dropping the Trooper’s limp body to the ground. There was no time to think, he realised, they have to act. And they have to act _now_.

Whether out of instinct or curiosity, Krennic turned his gaze, briefly, to Tarkin. The Grand Moff was crouched in what Krennic could only assume a ready stance, the tip of his vibrospear pointed towards the creature, and there was an intense alertness about him, a tightly coiled quality. He was ready to strike.

“You will distract it,” he said, as the creature advanced towards the only Trooper left. “Concentrate your fire towards its legs, if possible. Watch out for its tail. I will take it out while you distract it with your blaster fire.”

“There is no _time_ ,” Krennic snarled, taking a step back but his weapon trained towards the alien creature. “We take it out now or it’ll take out all of us. Draw your blaster.”

“I have _observed_ it—“ the other man started, a flash of noticeable anger in his usually cold visage.

“I don’t mean to cut you off, sir, but we have no time for arguments. I’d suggest we retreat for now.”

“ _Retreat_?” Krennic said, disbelief apparent. The single Trooper was currently doing a good job holding the creature back, but it won’t be forever. “This creature will pursue us—“

“We can seal the door,” Koor said, gaze flicking between the ongoing fight and Krennic. “And make a run for it.”

“There’s a turbolift not far from here,” Krennic had to concede. “We could use it.”

There was no response from Tarkin, and Koor had let loose some more shots, trying to assist the sole Trooper, because it was clear that he was losing, and Krennic turned to the Grand Moff to make his case. Tarkin’s gaze was fixed on the ongoing battle, specifically the creature, and he was wholly absorbed in it…fascinated. Krennic bent down a little, touched his shoulder, then quickly changed his mind and grasped it, trying to pull him back.

“Stay _back_ ,” he hissed, trying to shake himself free from Krennic’s grip, but he forcefully hauled him up, mindful of the fact that the other man was holding something with a pointy end. “You really are dense, aren’t you? I could take that creature by myself. You could run away, but I _will_ take it out.”

This was quite a change from the cold, calculating man he knows—and intensely hated—and it surprised Krennic for a brief moment or two, but he quickly gathered himself, realising that their commotion has started to draw attention of the creature, who had started to turn its eyeless head towards their direction.

“I don’t know what the kriff happened to you, but if we stay here, we _die_ ,” Krennic spat, not releasing the other man. Koor had quickly fired a couple of glancing shot in the creature’s way, but he ran out of power, and he shot both of them an anxious glance. The creature had most certainly started advancing towards them. Time is running out. “You said survival was our first priority, for the Empire if not for ourselves. Get yourself together. We need to get out of here.”

Perhaps it was his words, or perhaps it was the realisation of the imminent danger now heading towards them, or something else altogether—Krennic doesn’t know and doesn’t care enough about it—but Tarkin visibly calmed down, his aloof demeanor promptly returning. “Let me go,” he said, shaking himself free from Krennic’s grip and shot him a brief glare. “Order the Trooper to distract it. We’ll head towards the turbolift. Now!”

He didn’t need to say that twice, and Krennic shouted the order to his sole remaining Trooper, before fired another shot towards the creature. It found its mark this time, and the creature stopped briefly—its eyeless, elongated head a vision out of a nightmare—before doubling its speed. Tarkin fired, and so was the Trooper, but he didn’t see it, he had already turned towards the direction of the adjacent deck—not the way they came—as fast as he can, the Lieutenant following him and, he assumed, after that Tarkin followed suit. Their footsteps echoed in the empty hallway, and, turning around a bend, his heart racing wildly inside his chest, Krennic felt momentarily relieved when he saw the open door, marking the end of the deck they were currently in. His relief was short-lived, however, as he heard another shot, and the outlandish, wholly _alien_ noise that the creature produced. 

It was still after them. And they had enraged it.

He reached the other side first, followed by the Lieutenant. Tarkin was firing a couple more shots, before he, too, ran out of power, and he quickly caught up with them. 

“Seal the door,” he barked, and Krennic aimed his blaster towards the panel. He thought about the last Trooper still remaining in the other deck with the creature, and felt anger clenched his heart, anger towards his own failure of the project. If he had given them better enhancement, better implants, better armour…

“Now, Director!” Tarkin snarled, and it snapped him out of his reverie. He saw the creature still heading towards them, the Trooper firing uselessly behind it, but only briefly, before he pulled the trigger and shot the panel, frying the wires and triggering the lock mechanism. The durasteel door started to close, too slow for Krennic’s liking, but fast enough nevertheless to keep the creature on the other side of it. The last thing he saw was the creature bounding towards them, claws leaving gashes on the floor, and there was something like satisfaction after the door had closed. 

He let his blaster arm droop a little, sighing audibly. “Now to the turbolift. It’s just up ahead.”

“The Trooper, sir—“

“His sacrifice will be remembered,” he told Koor. “It was for the Empire.”

It was something unspoken, something that hangs between them like a specter over their shoulders, but they all know that there is no way that the Death Trooper would survive. Even Krennic knew: he had sent him to his doom. He had done it before, send men to their deaths, and it did not bother him much anymore. This was as much of a war as the previous ones, and they were merely pawns in the grander scheme of things. What actually bothers him is the fact that he had lost all of his prized Death Troopers. He felt his grip on his blaster tightening as the thought crossed his mind, and anger rising in the pit of his stomach. 

There was another alien noise as yet another round of shots ring out, and then a sickening ripping noise from the other side of the sealed door. He felt his stomach tightened, and a wave of nausea washed over him.

“I still think we should go to the hangar, sir,” Koor supplied, quietly, in the tense silence that followed. The Trooper’s unavoidable death seemed to have hit him harder than him or Tarkin—a logical conclusion—but so far the boy seemed to manage. “Get out, regroup with the Imperial Fleet. They’d need your expertise and guidance.”

“And run without making heads or tails of these creatures?” Tarkin responded, his scorn of the idea clear as the light of day. “You can do that if you like, boy, I will not stop you.”

“I won’t just _leave_ ,” Krennic snapped, looking at him. “This station—the entirety of it—was my project, my brainchild. My achievement. I am _not_ just going to pack up and leave.”

“Even if the fight seemed hopeless?” Koor contested, hotly. “You’ve seen that creature too, sir, you know what it’s capable of. It’s going to kill you, and there are stars know how much more of it out there now in this place.”

“No, I agree with the Director, for once,” Tarkin said, to Krennic’s surprise. “As always, he let sentimentality clouded his senses, but he does talk some sense, for once. We cannot simply just leave. General Leandar could, but not us.”

“As you say, sir,” Koor said in return, shaking his head and sighing tiredly. “I’m with you. Where to next, with the lift?”

“Down,” Krennic said, before Tarkin could say anything. “To the main generators. If the creatures had breached them, I wanted to know the extent of damage that they had done, and if they posed a threat to the reactor.”

“Yes, I agree,” Tarkin said, once more leaving Krennic surprised. Despite the insult that he’d thrown his way—and Krennic wanted to tell him that _he_ let bloodlust cloud his senses when they faced the creature—he was agreeing civilly now, and Krennic felt confusion, mingled with his surprise and the intense dislike he always felt whenever he’s around the other man. It was, thankfully, still there, despite everything they’d gone through together. “If these creatures constructed themselves a nest or something like it, they would find somewhere warm and out of the way, possibly near the core of this station. Therefore, I think we should go down.”

“Find something that could eliminate them better. Their weak spot,” Krennic added, but before he could finish his sentence, a scratching noise can be heard. He felt the blood drain from his face. “But first we need to move. Quick!”

“It’s a _durasteel_ door, sir—“

“Are you _blind_?” he expressed, already turned around, not waiting to see what happens next, as the scratching noise intensifies. “I know it’s durasteel, you fool! I managed the construction of this thing. Did you not see the hole in the wall of the third barracks?” he didn’t wait for an answer, already started running. “ _They could tear it apart with their claws!_ ”

And without any Death Troopers to watch their back now, they couldn’t risk it, he thought. He threw a glance behind his shoulder, saw Tarkin followed him, and, much to his horror, the scratching noise turned into a tearing sound, as the creature tried to tear its way through. The Lieutenant let out a horrified yelp, before turning around and following them as fast as his legs could carry him.

“The turbolift will be turned off by the system,” Tarkin said, remarkably calm despite the danger that was soon to be imminent. “Handle it, Krennic. I and the Lieutenant will provide you cover.”

“Let’s just hope that thing _holds_ ,” Krennic told him, gnashing his teeth in frustration. “It’s just around that bend. Just a little bit more.”

“ _Sir_ ,” Koor shouted, a hint of panic in his voice. “Looks like it’s coming through!”

“I _shouldn’t_ have said that,” Krennic growled. “Up ahead. Cover me.”

“You have it, Director. Be quick,” Tarkin told him, stopping, readying himself, and for a moment, Krennic felt an odd sense of gratitude. Still, he didn’t dwell on it, and made his way towards the turbolift. 

“Is it the right moment to say that I have a bad feeling about this? Sir?” Koor expressed, the poor Lieutenant, but he had his blaster pointed towards the direction they came. The creature should be here any second now, Krennic thought, biting his bottom lip. He reached for the small computer near the lift, keyed in his authorisation. He just hoped that he can make it before the creature tore its way through the door completely. 

“Just be ready, boy,” Tarkin said, and Krennic could hear the edge in his voice. He raised his volume, just a little, so Krennic could hear it. “Do it as fast as you can, Director. We’re counting on you.”

He couldn’t even think of an acidic reply, much less of anything, as he got into the system and tried to find the right window to enter the right command and the right code. He heard a terrible rending sound as the creature broke the door, and he knows that what he hoped for was in vain.

The creature was here.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's why you shouldn't name your batch of genetically engineered soldiers _Death_ Troopers, everyone knows that. I'm sorry for the grave joke, I need to be laid to rest.
> 
> Thank you for reading (wow this is SO LONG), feedback would be very much appreciated. hmu @ tumblr: _orsonkraennic_


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